13 May 2013 Research & Ideas

How to Spot a Liar

Key linguistic cues can help reveal
dishonesty during business
negotiations, whether it's a
flat-out lie or a deliberate
omission of key information,
according to research by Lyn M.
Van Swol, Michael T. Braun, and
Deepak Malhotra.

by Carmen Nobel
Want to know if someone's lying to
you? Telltale signs may include
running of the mouth, an excessive
use of third-person pronouns, and
an increase in profanity.
These are among the findings of a
recent experimental study that
delves into the language of
deception, detailed in the paper
Evidence for the Pinocchio Effect:
Linguistic Differences Between
Lies, Deception by Omissions, and
Truths, which was published in the
journal Discourse Processes.
Asked why the topic of deception
is important to business research,
negotiation expert Deepak
Malhotra responds wryly: "As it
turns out, some people will lie and
cheat in business!"
Malhotra, the Eli Goldston
Professor of Business

Administration at Harvard
Business School, coauthored the
paper with Associate Professor Lyn
M. Van Swol and doctoral
candidate Michael T. Braun, both
from the University of
WisconsinMadison. "Most
people admit to having lied in
negotiations, and everyone believes
they've been lied to in these
contexts," Malhotra says. "We may
be able to improve the situation if
we can equip people to detect and
deter the unethical behavior of
others."

"Just like Pinocchio's

nose, the number of words
grew along with the lie"
"Evidence for the Pinocchio
Effect" fills a key gap in the field
of deception research, says Van
Swol, the study's lead author.
Previous studies have examined the
linguistic differences between lies
and truthful statements. But this
one goes a step further to consider
the differences between flat-out
lying and so-called deception by
omissionthat is, the willful
avoidance of divulging important
information, either by changing the
subject or by saying as little as
possible.

The ultimatum game

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To garner a sample of truth tellers,

liars, and deceivers by omission,
the researchers recruited 104
participants to play the ultimatum
game, a popular tool among
experimental economists. In the
traditional version of the game, one
player (the allocator) receives a
sum of money and proposes how to
divvy it up with a partner (the
receiver). The receiver has the
option of either accepting the
proposed split or refusing the
allocator's proposalin which case
neither player gets any of the
money. Because receivers will
often reject offers they perceive as
unfair, leaving both parties with
nothing, it behooves the allocator
to offer an amount that will be
deemed fair by the receiver. In
many instances, allocators choose
to share half, Malhotra says.
For the purposes of the deception
experiment, the rules of the
ultimatum game differed from the
traditional version in three ways.
First, in this version, the allocator
received an endowment of either
$30 or $5 to share with the
receiver. The receiver had no way
of verifying how much money the
allocator had been given,
information which the allocator
was not required to divulge. Hence,
an allocator could conceivably give
the receiver $2 and keep $28, and
the receiver would be none the

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wiser, perhaps assuming only $5

was in play. The second change
was that if the receiver rejected the
allocator's offer he or she would
receive a default amount of $7.50
(or $1.25)whereas the allocator
would get no money at all.
Finally, each game included two
minutes of videotaped conversation
in which the receiver could grill the
allocator with questions, prior to
deciding whether to accept or
reject the offer. This provided
ample opportunity for the allocator
to tell the truth about the money,
lie, or try to avoid the subject
altogether. "We wanted to create a
situation where people could
choose to lie or not lie, and it
would happen naturally," Van
Swol says.
Ultimately, the receiver had to
decide whether the proposed
allocation was fair and honest,
based only on a conversation with
the allocator. Thus, it behooved the
allocator to be either a fair person
or a good liar.
As it turned out, 70 percent of the
allocators were honest, telling the
receivers the true amount of the
endowment and/or offering them at
least half of the pot. The remaining
30 percent of allocators were
classified either as liars (meaning
they flat-out lied about the amount
of the endowment) or as deceivers
by omission (meaning they evaded
questions about the amount of the
endowment, but ultimately offered
the receiver less than half).
After a graduate student
transcribed all the
allocator/receiver conversations,
the researchers carefully analyzed
the linguistic content, comparing

the truth tellers against the liars and

deceivers in order to suss out cues
for deception. They looked for both
strategic and nonstrategic language
cues.
"A strategic cue is a conscious
strategy to reduce the likelihood of
the deception being detected," Van
Swol explains, "whereas a
nonstrategic cue is an emotional
response, and people aren't usually
aware that they're doing it."

Key findings: word count,

profanity, and pronouns
In terms of strategic cues, the
researchers discovered the
following:
Bald-faced liars tended to
use many more words
during the ultimatum game
than did truth tellers,
presumably in an attempt
to win over suspicious
receivers. Van Swol
dubbed this "the Pinocchio
effect." "Just like
Pinocchio's nose, the
number of words grew
along with the lie," she
says.
Allocators who engaged in
deception by omission, on
the other hand, used fewer
words and shorter
sentences than truth tellers.
Among the findings related to
nonstrategic cues:
On average, liars used
more swear words than did
truth tellersespecially in
cases where the recipients
voiced suspicion about the
true amount of the
endowment. "We think
this may be due to the fact

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that it takes a lot of

cognitive energy to lie,"
Van Swol says. "Using so
much of your brain to lie
may make it hard to
monitor yourself in other
areas."
Liars used far more
third-person pronouns than
truth tellers or omitters.
"This is a way of
distancing themselves
from and avoiding
ownership of the lie," Van
Swol explains.
Liars spoke in more
complex sentences than
either omitters or truth
tellers.
The researchers also examined
when and whether the receivers
trusted the allocatorsnoting
instances when receivers voiced
doubts about the allocators'
statements, and correlating the
various linguistic cues with the
accuracy of the receivers'
suspicions. They also noted
instances in which receivers
showed no suspicion toward
deceivers.
On average, receivers tended to
trust the bald-faced liars far more
than they trusted the allocators who
tried to deceive by omission. In
short, relative silence garnered
more suspicion than flat-out
falsehoods. "It turns out that
omission may be a terrible
deception strategy," Van Swol
says. "In terms of succeeding at the
deception, it was more effective to
outright lie. It's a more
Machiavellian strategy, but it's
more successful."

Possible applications
In the latest phase of their research,

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the team is investigating the

linguistic differences between
lying in person and lying via email.
Results regarding the latter may be
increasingly useful as a larger
portion of business is now being
conducted via email, and such
communications leave a transcript
that can be analyzed
carefullyand at leisureby
suspicious counterparts. "People
detect lies better over the computer
than they do face-to-face," Van
Swol says.
That said, the researchers are quick
to emphasize that linguistic cues
are most definitely not a foolproof

method of detecting lies, even

among those who are trained to
look out for them.
"This is early stage research,"
Malhotra says. "As with any such
work, it would be a mistake to take
the findings as gospel and apply
them too strictly. Rather, the
factors we find to be associated
with lies and deception are perhaps
most useful as warning signs that
should simply prompt greater
vigilance and further investigation
regarding the veracity of the people
with whom we are dealing."

deal with liars during business

negotiations, read Negotiation
Genius: How to Overcome
Obstacles and Achieve Brilliant
Results at the Bargaining Table
and Beyond by Deepak Malhotra
and Max H. Bazerman. Follow
Malhotra on Twitter at
@Prof_Malhotra.

About the author

Carmen Nobel is senior editor of
Harvard Business School Working
Knowledge.

To learn more about how to

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